Part II (of III)

Sarah: To continue...here's Part II.

The last couple weeks of the semester flew by, with the students taking every opportunity to go on a hike, watch a movie together, or play a game. During the last academic week they were all busy finishing papers, collecting data for their research projects, and preparing for their community presentations. At the end of the last academic week, the very end of April, the final SNU professor came down, Bob Lively. He didn't come down to teach, but to be a part of the wrap-up and debriefing process and to observe the community presentations. It's always fun having Bob around, especially since his sole commitment is to evaluate the program and talk to students about their experiences.

Commuinty presentation night is always a highly anticipated night by both us at QERC, and also by the community. Unfortunately, the weekend we had laid aside for presenting the students' research turned out to be a busy weekend for the Chacon family, who is often most of our crowd. One night there was a soccer game in an adjacent valley, so many family members were going to be gone for that night. We scheduled the presentation night for Friday in hopes of gathering as many people as we could, but that day also proved to be an unexpected day for the Chacons. It was the day that many family members came to visit with the purpose of hiking the trail from San Gerardo over to Providenciea with Efrain Chacon (the grandfather and patriarch of the family) in order to re-walk the steps Efrain took when he first came over here in the early 1950s. I think they may have underestimated how exhausted they would be after the trek, and all ended up falling asleep by the time our presentations were to begin!

Needless to say, we had a very great turn out, with about 40-50 people in attendance. Many people hadn't been to QERC before, and we enjoyed hosting them and showing them around our building. Our students did a fantastic job presenting their research, with Raul Fernandez (grandson of Efrain) doing our interpreting. It's always a fun night to see everything finally come together, and the students also were relieved to have the final academic component complete! As a celebration we had a sleepover with popcorn and a movie and leftover cookies from the presentation night.

Once presentation night was over, the students only had one last weekend here at QERC and in San Gerardo de Dota. Much of their time was spent packing and saying goodbyes to friends in the community, but they also had to get in many last card games and hanging out with each other. Some of their friends from the community came over for one last night of playing "sardines" outside and Mafia inside when they'd had enough running around. After a good last weekend with little sleep, Monday morning rolled around and the final goodbyes were said to this place.

We had scheduled a few days at the end of the semester for a debriefing/re-entry retreat with our students, and like last year, this took place up at Arenal Volcano. This year we stayed at the Arenal Observatory Lodge, the closest lodge located near the volcano. We had beautiful views of the smoke coming out of the top of the volcano and rocks tumbling down the side. It's also a great location for watching some beautiful birds and swimming in their pool and Jacuzzi while watching the volcano. One afternoon we took advantage of some of the attractions around the area and did the Arenal Hanging Bridges. We had a great time exploring and going on one last hike together, while being able to cross 6 bridges suspended up in the canopy. It put us right at eye level with some beautiful birds and made for some terrifying views (for me!) of the land far below us.

Though our time at Arenal may sound like it was all play and no purpose, that was not the case. We had scheduled 4 different "sessions" where we had lively discussions both in order to debrief the entire semester, and also to prepare the students for re-entering their home country and culture. It was a good time of recapping all of their memories, and pulling out the more meaningful experiences and worldviews that they wanted to bring back to the U.S. and implement in their lives back home. We also discussed reverse culture shock in full detail, complete with fun skits where the students tried to imagine what their lives would be like upon their return.

After Arenal, we returned to San Jose for one last night together, complete with a movie at the VIP theater where we saw a movie sitting in our own personal recliner chairs, and a nice dinner to finish. And then it was time to say our goodbyes at the airport the next morning, not only to our students, but also to Peter, who had been our intern for almost 7 months and an integral part of the semester program. They will all be missed!

To be continued with Part III...

Part I (of III)

Sarah: Well it’s been forever since we’ve written a blog entry. David has been excited to write about the second half of TES, but our lives very quickly became very busy, and he was never able to get to it in the midst of everything else. I’ve decided to catch up our blog on everything SINCE that class finished, and I’ll let David go back and write about the second half when he has a chance.

So I’ve decided to split up this enormous blog entry into three parts, in order to cover everything between the beginning of April and now, and not to overwhelm any faithful readers in the process.

Thus begins Part I.

After TES, our group returned exhausted but thrilled with their experiences traveling around Costa Rica. After learning all about the different ecosystems in Costa Rica and experiencing firsthand different sustainability projects, it led well into the next professor coming down for classes. Marty Michaelson came down to teach his week of Biblical Theology in Global Stewardship, so it gave the students even more of a chance to approach the topic of stewardship in their personal lives and from a biblical perspective. After TES and Global Stew, our students were feeling quite motivated to go back and change the world, recycling one tin can at a time. :)

Following Marty’s week, the students had a full schedule. Three professors came down, Nancy Halliday, Carrie Bentley, and Sharon Young for her second time. Sharon continued to work with the students a little bit with the Entomology class, and Nancy was down to teach Tropical Medicine. Carrie is a new professor at SNU, so she came along to check out the location and the semester program. She also has a lot of experience with research, so she took the opportunity to sit down with each student and talk about the direction of their research project. Though late in the semester, those talks were valuable and encouraging to the students to finish their research strong.

Tropical Medicine was the focus for the week, with the students following the same schedule as with the other visiting professors and having class time every afternoon. However, unlike the other classes, this particular class incorporated a couple of extra elements. David and I had met and briefly gotten to know the chief of the indigenous tribe Boruca here in Costa Rica, so she and 2 other women came to visit and talk with the students about their customs and culture with a focus on how they utilize medicinal plants within their community. The workshops the gave to the students were incredible as they talked about their lifestyles, how they make a living, and the struggles they have as indigenous people being less than 1% of the population of Costa Rica. Toward the end of their workshop they actually did a demonstration of how they weave the cotton into thread and then how they use that thread to make all sorts of artisan goods like bags, purses, and belts. They are also famous for making Boruca masks, which are elaborately designed and painted in the shapes of animals from Costa Rica. The students took turns weaving, and were excited to purchase lots of handmade souvenirs from these women.

Later that week, the Tropical Medicine course took a field trip into San Jose. First stop was InBio, the Institute of Biodiversity. Here they received a lecture followed by a tour of the bioprospecting unit, which looks at the chemical properties in plants and animals and fungus to be used for medicinal purposes. After that, we headed to Clinica Biblica, one of the main private hospitals in San Jose. They received a talk from QERC’s main doctor, Dr. Longworth, and then a tour of the hospital. Everyone was impressed with the high quality of the equipment and facilities in the hospital.

The following week was the last week of visiting professors for the students. Frank Johnson, the Spanish professor at SNU, came down to finish up his week of teaching Applied Cultural Integration. The students had each done a project of their choice on an issue dealing with Latin America or Spain, and they each gave their presentations to Frank the week he was here. The other purpose for Frank coming down was to give the students a test over their Spanish ability. It wasn’t mandatory, but allowed for the students to possibly get credit for Spanish in addition to the other 15-17 credits they were receiving in other areas. Almost all students received at least 6 Spanish credits, with two of our students receiving 12 Spanish credits! It is a lot of fun to see them so excited about learning more Spanish, now that they have a desire to learn more and better communicate with Spanish-speakers they’ll come in contact with.

And for the last picture, every weekend our students continued to enjoy the excellent food and good fellowship up at Laura’s bakery. Most of them even bought a hat that they had picked out the colors for and were made by Laura’s Costa Rican sister-in-law.
I’ll leave that to be the end of Part I…